The Daughter of Siena: A Novel

by Marina Fiorato

  The thought brought home to her, suddenly, how tired she was, how the fear had wearied her, and the lifting of that fear had made her drowsy. She did not have the energy to get up and remove her mother’s riding garb. Let it be her coverlet: it only brought her closer. But as she drifted off to sleep the smell of the horse on the leather recalled not her mother, but him.

  10

  The Dragon

  Pia Tolomei, realizing that her life became more and more unhappy with each passing day, knew exactly what to blame for her situation: her beauty. Her beauty made others stare in the street. Her beauty made men desire her, women dislike her, and her husband hate her. Her beauty made her a bargaining chip in a marriage settlement she did not want. Her beauty made Nello hack off her hair for talking to a stranger at dinner.

  From the age of ten, twelve, as the sunburst of her beauty was rising to its zenith, she was forbidden to take any but the gentlest exercise. The physicality of her life as a child, the vigour of playing with her friends and running through the shady arches and squares, all this was denied her. It dawned upon her one day that she had not felt the thumping of her own heart for years; she never felt short of breath, even after a vigorous measure, or a steep flight of stairs. She spent her life being still, silent, decorous. She wondered if her heart had shrivelled within her and died.

  She was encouraged instead to take up the pursuits of well-born young ladies, drawing, music, languages, and her only solace, reading. Because she was named after a tragic heroine, because she was living the life of a tragic heroine, she sought in books a mirror for her sadness. She was aware of the new thinking, the new sciences, the enlightenment of the world; but she devoured instead legends and tales of old, because she herself was preserved in the amber of a bygone age.

  A particular tale came back to her now, from the Morte d’Arthur, of a lady who had a curse laid upon her for being too beautiful. Trapped night and day, suspended naked in the scalding breath of a dragon, she was finally saved by a knight called Lancelot who slew the dragon and set her free.

  Pia Tolomei was a clever young woman and a brave one, but even she was given to flights of fancy. She had been planning her escape from the moment her father had given her Cleopatra’s coin, but sometimes she just wanted to be rescued by someone else.

  And now she thought she might have found her Lancelot.

  ‘There – Siena.’ Signor Bruni spread his arms wide, like a showman, as if he had conjured the city, revealing the vista below.

  Pia sat on her little palfrey, with Signor Bruni holding the leading rein. From her high seat she marvelled at the scene – in the morning sun she saw her city as she had never seen it before. A silvery mist lay low in the valleys and far, far away the low red roofs and the tall towers were gilded with the morning sun. Starlings wheeled around the Torre del Mangia, and the squat striped duomo crouched above the city like a sleeping tiger. Pia’s mouth dropped open and she just gazed.

  She’d had a dozen lessons, and fallen a dozen times. She’d made no fuss, she had not cried: she’d simply clambered back on. Pia was now accustomed to pain and the management of those sensations, and had driven herself onward. On the second morning her thigh muscles were screaming with every step, her fingers and forearms throbbing, her back aching, as her body woke up to the muscles it did not know it had. By the third morning she’d begun to show aptitude; she was beginning to sit easily, beginning to feel the horse through her hands. She knew she was a good pupil, but her only fault was that she wanted to go faster, learn more. Far and fast, was her litany. Far and fast.

  For the first two days in the courtyard, Signor Bruni had taught her to ride without reins, to hold on with her knees and control the palfrey with the merest pressure of her legs. But soon she wanted to go further, faster, swifter. She was driven by the clandestine agenda that she would not yet share with him. He’d bent to her will; she could now trot a little, he’d taught her to rise and fall with the exacting rhythm of the horse’s steps, yet by sheer determination she’d mastered the basics of this most difficult of speeds in one session. And, since the courtyard of the Eagles’ palace was a little small to canter,

  Signor Bruni had taken Pia out into the hills where he used to ride as a boy, to show her his favourite western aspect of the city.

  His stallion, ever at his shoulder, trotted behind them, seemingly quite happy to be in Signor Bruni’s company. But Pia wondered why he never mounted the horse, and wondered too at the relationship between Signor Bruni and his benefactor. Ever mindful of propriety, Pia knew that Signor Bruni had asked Faustino’s permission to take his tuition outside the city walls and that Faustino had given his consent. If she was right about her father-in-law’s motive to give his son a spur to beat the Tower horseman in the Palio, Faustino would give them any licence to become as close and as free as they liked.

  They’d made their way through Siena, Pia riding and Signor Bruni leading his horse, the shadows still cool in the early morning. As they left the Eagle contrada Pia began to feel much more at her ease. It was good to ride through the streets of her city on horseback – the pastime and the place seemed as one. As they went down the hill into the close overhanging palaces of the Forest contrada, Signor Bruni corrected her seat. In the winding alleyways between the dye shops of the Goose contrada he reminded her to keep her heels down, and through the archways of the Dragon contrada he told her to relax her hands on the reins.

  At last, on the outskirts of the Porcupine contrada, they reached the Camollia gate. There they passed the place where the bones and skin of a dead donkey had been cast over the walls a week ago by a person unknown. The Porcupine citizens had left it to rot where it fell, too afraid of the omen that the city would fall to lay their hands on the corpse. Pia and Signor Bruni both crossed themselves against the omen, but they travelled through the gates untroubled by such portents on this golden day. Once the shadow of the architrave had passed over Pia’s dusky head, she began to smile.

  Signor Bruni was to teach Pia to canter, and she listened carefully to his instruction as he assured her that the smooth gait of the horse when cantering was much easier to sit than the trot. Pia gathered her reins with a new confidence. She could already see fine muscles begin to appear in her slim arms, muscles that would tell a trained eye that someone could ride. She knew her legs were changing shape too, and that she had new strength in her limbs. The muscles she was developing were riders’ muscles – Sienese muscles.

  Her new attire formed a large part of Pia’s happiness. She had spent every day since she was twelve being laced into heavy chemises and gowns and corsets, forcing her tiny waist into smaller and smaller breathless circles. Her clothes had suppressed her as much as her position, as much as her menfolk. Now, in her mother’s riding dress, she was beginning to breathe. Her mother had taken her outside the circle of her stays and Signor Bruni had taken her outside the circle of Siena’s walls. Under these benign influences she could feel, just for a day, that she was free.

  ‘You should name her.’ Signor Bruni broke in on her thoughts.

  She turned and looked down, regal, questioning.

  ‘The horse. You’ve had her for a week. What should she be called?’

  She considered. She felt like a queen sitting on her palfrey. For that moment, they were there as one, woman and horse, and for that moment the city was perfect: beautiful, ideal and distant, suspended in the mist like Camelot. For that moment, she belonged in that kingdom; she and her horse both fitted.

  ‘Guinevere,’ she said, and watched Signor Bruni shiver as if their thoughts had marched together and they were both in the world of Arthur. ‘What is it? Does my choice not please you?’

  He sighed, shook his head. ‘No, it is a good name. But it reminds me of what I have to tell.’

  Pia’s eyes widened as she listened to the incredible account. The duchess and horseman had deciphered the clue that she had dropped at shrift, and Signor Bruni had been there at the duomo to hear the f
irst colloquy of the Nine.

  ‘They are planning for Nello to be the victor, and for the Nine to be enriched through betting syndicates. Time is marching, the Palio approaches, and before that, the next meeting of the Nine, wherever that may be, is due to take place in two days’ time, at the church of the Once and Future King – Arthur. So now you can see why his queen’s name made me jump. And then, then, Romulus, whoever he is, will come to be the puppet master of the whole affair.’ He looked at Pia, his eyes narrowed against the rising sun. ‘Have you seen Nello ride?’

  Pia shook her head, her rook-black hair swinging about her ears. ‘Never. His brother’s skill was well known, but as you know Nello rides in secret, far out in the salt marshes of the Maremma. I know, though, that he spent his life in Vicenzo’s shadow.’

  She could see that a piece of the puzzle had suddenly found its right place in Signor Bruni’s mind. ‘Is that why he had you dye his hair? Your hands … Is he …’ He could clearly not easily articulate the strange perversity that had occurred to him. ‘Becoming Vicenzo?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Pia did not want to remember that night of the dyeing, even at this distance. ‘He once told me they shared everything.’ She thought of the little heiress on the ham-hook and shivered. ‘He wants to live his life in Vicenzo’s hue. He wants Vicenzo’s pigments, his riding skills, his wife,’ she looked down, ‘and his victory. Vicenzo won the Palio, even after death: Berio came in scosso without a rider. Now Nello must win it, too.’ She looked directly at him with her olive-dark gaze. ‘It is not a commonplace rivalry. It is more that he loved his brother too much, wanted to consume him, to be him. He is driven by love of a dead rival – and now,’ she hesitated, ‘and now …’

  ‘The hatred of a living one.’

  She was silent.

  ‘That’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it? That’s why Faustino gives us these freedoms? He’s fostering Nello’s hatred, nurturing it like an incubus, to ensure his son’s victory.’

  Pia had not known he saw so much. Her silence was all the confirmation he needed.

  ‘And yet, you are here. You agreed to the lessons.’ He was almost accusing, almost as if she were a true Eagle after all, one of them.

  Pia turned her near-black Tolomei eyes on him. ‘Agreed to them? I wanted them.’

  ‘Why?’

  Now, with this ally and with her city laid out behind her, she could tell what she had to tell. ‘I needed to learn to ride.’ She breathed out the relief of admission. ‘I need to ride away from Nello.’

  ‘Far and fast?’

  She smiled the ghost of a smile. ‘Far and fast.’

  ‘Even though Nello’s hatred of me might help him to win?’

  She did not answer him directly. ‘It is a little risky,’ said Pia. ‘To bet a city on a horse race.’

  Signor Bruni shrugged. ‘They are fixing the runners. I am considered, rightly or wrongly, to be the only rival to Nello’s skill. And so I have been given a horse that cannot win. I have not ridden him yet, let alone trained him, and now the Palio is only a week away.’

  He sat down and began to pitch stones into the valley, where the morning mist swallowed them. The black curls ruffled across his face in the breeze, obscuring his profile. It was hard to see his eyes.

  ‘But there is something else too. There has to be. You are right, no one would bet a city on a horse race. This Romulus that they spoke of has some part to play. The Palio is but one part of the design, a distraction.’ He turned to her, appealing. ‘Do you know where they will meet? Do you know the whereabouts of Arthur’s church?’

  Pia slid from her mount with a new confidence. ‘I have read the Morte d’Arthur, the very book of which the duchess spoke. I have a well-thumbed copy in my father’s library. There are many, many churches and chapels throughout, and hermitages, and shrines. Mostly in ancient Britain. But without the book in front of me …’ She shook her head. ‘Neither Faustino nor Nello say anything to me. I heard of their first meeting through a chance remark made to the cook. But in the house of Aquila, all is secret. They hush their tongues when I am in the room.’

  Signor Bruni cast another stone into the valley. ‘Well, listen when you can. They may drop something else.’

  Pia looked at the white horse, standing still, head high. ‘Leocorno. The Unicorn. He’s well named.’ White as snow, framed by the fairytale view. ‘What’s wrong with him? Why won’t he let you ride him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might. I just know that Faustino gave him to me. He does not want me to win, so he gave me a horse that would lose.’

  Pia went to Leocorno, reached out a gentle hand to stroke the white nose. ‘All I can tell you is that they bought this horse from Boli, the horse trader from Arezzo, and this much you knew already. He came to the stables the same day as the big black beast for Nello. He’s friendly,’ she said with surprise, as the horse nudged at her hand. She knew of the legends: that a maid might befriend a unicorn and she was, yet, a maid. Abused, pummelled and bullied, yes, but as yet untouched in that way. Leocorno knew her for what she was.

  ‘Friendly enough when no one’s trying to ride him, yes.’

  Pia ran her finger over the scar between Leocorno’s ears. ‘Poor thing,’ she said. ‘He’s been hurt. Battle scars.’

  Signor Bruni stood abruptly and walked over to Pia and Leocorno. She started, as if she had angered him, but he ignored her.

  ‘Battle scars,’ he repeated softly. ‘Battle scars.’

  Then, louder and more abruptly, he said, ‘Keep talking to him, right in front, where he can see you.’

  Pia slid her eyes sideways to Signor Bruni, who was treading gently behind Leocorno. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Battle,’ he said. ‘You were right. He’s been in a battle.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. There are always wars. I was in one myself.’ The tone of his voice told Pia that there were secrets that Signor Bruni kept too. ‘Keep talking to him.’

  He moved behind the horse’s left ear and clicked his fingers smartly, while Pia talked away, of nothing, of everything.

  Nothing. Leocorno did not even twitch his ear. Signor Bruni trod softly around the hindquarters and clicked again, just behind the other ear. Nothing.

  ‘Move to the side this time,’ said Signor Bruni quietly, ‘and keep talking where he can see you.’

  Pia did as she was bid, watching while Signor Bruni hunted around for a dry stick and approached Leocorno from behind again. This time he snapped the stick behind the stallion’s ears, with a crack so loud the echo sounded around the hills. Leocorno shot forward, powering through the tufts of coarse grass, kicking up tufa dust like little clouds around his flying hooves as they spat up stones.

  Pia whistled softly between her teeth – something she had never been allowed to do. ‘He’s fast.’

  She looked at Signor Bruni. His eyes were narrowed, watching the horse. He nodded, clearly excited, as he saw, for the first time, Leocorno’s incredible turn of speed.

  ‘Will he come back?’ asked Pia.

  Signor Bruni shrugged, clearly thinking the same thing. ‘I don’t know.’

  Within a few heartbeats Leocorno was a tiny dot, resolving again as he turned in a dust storm and trotted back, the incomparable city hanging in the mist behind him like the backdrop of a stage. Truly, thought Pia, he suited his name today: a unicorn before this fabled landscape. He shambled to a walk as he stopped, shaking his head, blowing reproof at Signor Bruni.

  Signor Bruni took his head in his hands and kissed his white nose, hard. ‘Bless you, bless you, my dear, dear Leocorno. I did not know that you were deaf. What was it? A cannon?’ He turned to Pia. ‘A fellow in my troop lost his hearing that way too. Blown up and landed in a tree. Couldn’t hear a thing unless you bellowed at him. Don’t fret, caro mio,’ this to Leocorno. ‘We’ll make all things right now.’

  Pia, watching, remembered the way Signor Bruni had spoken to her when she had first fallen
off her palfrey and felt a powerful pang of longing. She watched the gentle hands and heard the gentle tones as Signor Bruni calmed the jittery horse, and she knew that the gentleness that he displayed, not just his strength and skill, was a significant part of what drew her to him. No one had ever bothered to be gentle with her in her life.

  She approached the horseman and his horse, drawn to him, to be next to him. ‘Now what?’

  Signor Bruni carried on stroking Leocorno. ‘I don’t know. It explains why he won’t have a man on his back – he thinks he’s going into battle. I think he was a warhorse. He may have belonged to a general or even a king – he’s a true-bred Lipizzaner with a brand. Perhaps the mount of a Spanish hussar at Milazzo – we might have been on the same campaign.’ He pulled Leocorno’s ears affectionately and chuckled helplessly. ‘How can I whisper a horse that cannot hear? My one skill is useless.’

  Pia considered. ‘I think he would let you ride him if only he could hear you. Why don’t you shout to him? I’ll hold the head-collar while you try.’

  Signor Bruni looked dubious, but Pia nodded and smiled. Clearly feeling foolish, Signor Bruni began to bellow in Leocorno’s ears, cupping his hands around his mouth, his voice echoing around the hills. The horse flicked its white ears forward and listened. Pia began to smile. Gently, Signor Bruni slipped his foot into the stirrup, still yelling, and vaulted smoothly into the saddle, gathering the reins. Leocorno twitched slightly and swished his tail. Pia and Signor Bruni exchanged a look, and Signor Bruni steeled himself for a buck. But it never came. Signor Bruni lowered his voice gradually until he was silent. He was still in the saddle. He regarded Pia in quiet triumph.